Every country tells a story about itself. In America, one of the central ideas in our story is that “the unfinished revolution” of America is attainable only if we work hard enough, fight long enough and use the legal and political system to bring about change. In fact, throughout the world today, this belief is widespread and remains a key component in every fight for social justice, including the fight to bring the ruling class to account for the millions of deaths from COVID-19.
For the most part, what we know of the story of America has been created and perpetuated by the ruling class. To work, it had to include some element of truth, or in the least, reflect an experience that resonated with enough of daily life to hold water. This meant that the ruling class had to guarantee that capitalism was expanding and at least a section of the working class prospered. Whenever workers rose up to improve their lives, the ruling class skillfully used the workers’ aspirations to achieve their own goals.
The ruling class made every effort to stop any motion from moving beyond its immediate demands, finding multiple ways to reroute and dissipate its efforts, often turning its original aims into a mere shadow of the often radical vision the movement espoused.
We have seen this time and again throughout our history. The enslaved and poor whites fought for the ideals of the American Revolution only to find their hopes dashed by the rule of a colonial slave-owning and commercial elite. Troops of all colors sacrificed their lives to end slavery and overturn the power of the slave owners only to see the multiracial democracy they hoped to build torn apart by the manipulation of racism and the violence of the ruling class North and South. Those who fought to push the demands of a “Second Reconstruction” of civil rights beyond de jure equality found their radical visions of society thwarted.
These struggles were never defeats. The struggle of the workers has been responsible for all that is good in our country. They played an indispensable role in pushing society forward — freeing society from its feudal monarchical grip, ending chattel slavery, dismantling decades of segregation and legal inequality, giving shape to the historical aspirations of generations of workers.
Our class has lived a history of struggle, learning from its accumulated experience for the next round of the fight. As the oppression, violence, and misery being forced on our class deepen, we are rising up to fight anew for the society we have always envisioned. Only this time our vision of a new America can finally be realized.
Trials in the courtroom have always figured into this history of struggle. They are only one of the ways of forcing accountability and justice within the system for the crimes perpetrated against our class by the ruling class. But trials are not simply the prosecution of this or that individual or act. Around them crowd the deep history of exploitation and oppression—a history we share with workers around the world—as witness after witness speaks to crimes that arise from the suffering that capitalism has brought to our class. The trial of the murderer Derek Chauvin is part of this great historical reckoning over the crimes of capitalism that ties our struggles here to the millions around the world and all who seek real justice.
For the ruling class, trials mean something different. They use trials to teach our class a lesson about the dangers of fighting back and to silence our demands. Or, they use trials to appear to concede to our demands when their real intention is to stave off another round of protests in the streets, giving them room to connive and maneuver to undercut our movement.
But they always back up this “rule of law” with the rule of lawlessness. We can think of the thousands of African Americans who have been lynched and murdered by marauding bands set in motion by the rulers. And how many men, women, and children are still killed every day by the police despite millions marching in the streets. How many trials never came to fruition because they didn’t serve the interests of the ruling class, such as the crimes of polluters, child traffickers, financial fraudsters, real estate swindlers, and liars of all types.
How can we not see the handling of the COVID pandemic in the same light? Worldwide a recent study estimates that almost 7 million people have died instead of the currently reported 3.24 million. This same study puts the real death toll at over 900,000 and tens of millions sick in the US. A recent, widely publicized study in the British medical journal The Lancet reported that about 40 percent of our Covid-19 mortality “could have been averted had the US death rate mirrored the weighted average of the other G7 nations.”
The ruling class has made deliberate decisions here, and for this, they must be held accountable.
A rising chorus of activists, academic, legal scholars, and writers from around the world are raising the call against the global ruling class for “crimes against humanity” and discussing how governments can be brought to justice under international law. In their struggle, they raise up the aspirations of our class for a society that puts the well-being of humanity first.
At the same time, we see that the root of it all is capitalism and the system of private property. Corporate nursing homes have allowed our elderly to die, hospitals have refused to pay for much-needed PPE, the corporate price gouging and the elected officials that allowed it to happen, the denial of human worth. At the root, it is capitalism that is the crime against humanity.
The aspiration for justice comes from a deep place in our collective class history, an aspiration that keeps arising anew to complete its task of making the world a fit place for all humanity.
Such a world is now possible. We now have the means to fulfill all that we have dreamed of for so long — to provide for all regardless of income, or color, or sex, or faith, or any other category that the capitalists have used to deny us the means of life. Houses can be built in a day, health care and education can be provided to everyone, culture can be respected and borders erased, new ideas can allow humanity to move beyond the narrow limits of the past.
History shows that these aspirations — real justice — cannot be redressed without the radical restructuring of society. The inhumanity with which capitalism has indelibly marked us all will remain unless we harness that deep aspiration for justice to a vision of a society where no one goes without and where such atrocities could not even be imagined.
Published: May 27, 2021
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